8 Jul
As an aside to yesterday’s brew, I think I’ve found some more fans of my homebrew – or at least the malt. These are our (or rather our co-op’s) pigs, just arrived on Sunday. We took the spent malt and hops up to them this morning to see if they liked it. No doubt about that: they went crazy for it. Let’s see if they like the yeast next week (I’ll kill it first to avoid making them ill). Who knows: this might give some interesting flavours to their meat.
28 Jun
It’s a beautiful sunny day down here in Cornwall, so it’s the perfect time to start thinking about brewing a rich, dark Christmas porter, right? At the weekend I started working on a recipe for Coal Porter, the brew I’ve been planning to keep for Christmas, and ordered the malts that I’ll need for it. They arrived today and include:
..plus the Maris Otter makes ten. I also plan to add a cinnamon stick and some coffee, and hop it with Fuggles. I don’t have any free weekends for ages, so this will need to be a weekday brew. Let’s see how that works out! I’m just waiting on the yeast to arrive now. I’ve ordered Thames Valley 3 from Brewlab, which I believe is (or is similar to) the Fuller’s strain, and so should be perfect for porter.
Also in the delivery was some more Citra, so I’ve dry-hopped the Summer Session with 25g. It’s good, but I still want more of that Citra aroma, and hopefully this will do the trick.
Sparging my wort 